Analysts at Ovum have announced a number of predictions for the telecoms industry in 2011, with expectations that Windows 7 will become the fastest growing platform for smartphones, while the mobile landgrab in emerging markets will begin to slow down with emphasis shifting to broadband.

It is thought that telecoms markets in the emerging markets of Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America will see intensified competition that will lead to lower prices, slower growth and indeed lower margins.

It is noted by Ovum analyst Angel Dobardziev that the land grab phase which occurred in the last decade will begin to wind down in 2011. Although it is noted that there are areas of Africa and Asia that still contain potential customers, they are predominantly in rural areas that are hard to reach, and so are not attractive to service providers.

For service providers all of this will mean that 20-30 percent subscriber and revenue growth rates will become increasingly rare, and single digit or low double digit growth will be the norm, particularly in regions such as Eastern Europe and Latin America, said Dobardziev.

Competition will intensify as players increasingly focus on winning market share from each other.

Furthermore smartphones will increase their proliferation across emerging markets, with significant reductions in device price points expected combined with the increasing capabilities of mid range devices.

This will be great for users, who will enjoy bigger, better, and faster devices services and services  mostly at lower prices. To deliver this and retain their margins, operators will increase their cost efficiency efforts.

Meanwhile broadband access is forecast to become much more prominent in emerging markets during 2011, with the expectation that will become the fastest and most promising growth engine, amid the rapidly growing coverage of 3G and to a lesser extent wireline, cable, WiMAX , and in some instances fibre, according to Dobardziev.

There will be parallels with the mobile land grab in the intensity of the battle , but the explosion of data traffic that will ensue will pose a new set of network and financial challenges to telcos  and a massive opportunity for equipment vendors.

More general predictions for smartphones by Ovum analyst Tony Cripps point to the continued adoption by consumers throughout 2011, though it is a predicted that the focus will begin to be more on the major platform firms influence on the ecosystems on which they operate rather than just the number of shipments that they make.

According to Cripps it will be Microsofts Windows Phone 7 platform that will make the biggest impact in 2011, with the expectation that it will become the fastest-growing platform.

Cripps believes that it is the unique and desirable interface of the platforms interface, accompanied by a design and user experience that will enable it to begin to rival Apples iPhone.

When asked about whether Windows Phone 7 will continue capitalise on the predicted growth, Cripps told TechEye that there are certainly positive signs.

"This is an interesting question, especially in light of what an outwardly attractive package of user experience and integrated service offerings Windows Phone 7 represents. Certainly it has introduced something fresh to the smartphone field among the many iPhone-like approaches we've also seen, as well as the scale to make those developments meaningful in the market."

"With that amount of investment behind it, the success or otherwise of Windows Phone 7 will be something of a bellwether for the future development of the smartphone market, he said.

"Right now we'd probably bet on it becoming a solid number three behind Android and iPhone in the medium term with the potential to go further. However, as it's early days as yet it would be a bit much to expect it to overhaul those platforms - or BlackBerry - in the near future."

Android meanwhile is expected to be the winner with regards to popularity amongst mobile developers during 2011 as it begins to swamp Apple's installed base.

"Android offers a readymade but also fairly customisable software platform for OEMs that isn't tied to any particular device manufacturer," Cripps tells TechEye. "It is readily supported by major chipset vendors and also which offers the potential for an "iPhone-like" experience for users and application developers across a very wide range of price points."

"In this way Google filled a gap in the market that other platforms - notably Symbian and Windows Mobile - couldn't completely fulfil, although that's not to say that there aren't disadvantages in providing Google with such widespread access to peoples' mobile phones."

"This is especially true in terms of advertising opportunities and the difficulty other parties, mobile operators in particular, have in competing with them with their own web-Based apps and services."

Cripps believes that Android potentially overtaking the iPhone in mobile developers' affections could lead to a scenario where major content and application providers begin to develop for Android at the expense of iOS.

"If that occurs there could be ramifications for the attractiveness of each platform for consumers or other end users who may begin to choose devices based on what content or applications are available on them as much as they do other factors such as brand, desirability, price etc. That would be more of a worry for Apple than falling behind in the sheer number of apps (although that's a long way from happening) as it would materially impact on its device sales."

its all pretty funny..
I like this more....
“Cripps believes that it is the unique and desirable interface of the platforms interface, accompanied by a design and user experience that will enable it to begin to rival Apples iPhone.”

So I guess the “explosion” will occur in the third world dumping ground of old technology?

Too funny. How will they play with those statistics to make them look relevant? They are way behind, now they could catch up and pass (android,rim, IOS) if they had a technology that raises the bar, but I haven't heard anything of the sort. Quite the opposite, buggy, chewing up precious bandwidth. Good luck boys.

The best part of this story is that it demonstrates that customers are not married to a specific operating system, good news for Apple, the Android phone makers, WebOS, etc.

While I agree with your overall premise, I'm not so sure it translates to good news for Apple.

The problem is that Apple's OS goes on Apple hardware.

The other OS's are designed for (and being used on) hardware made by a wide variety of manufacturers.

What it looks like to me, is a situation that's surprisingly similar to the early days of personal computing.

In the beginning, Apple dominated the market, but that quickly changed once the multitude of manufacturers began building platforms that ran MS-DOS, and then Windows.

Apple nearly went out of business then, primarily because of their (Jobs') policy of maintaining tight control over hardware and software. Their market share dropped to the floor.

Apple's current success lies in their introduction of ground-breaking products; but other manufacturers are moving into those markets, especially as competitors to iPhone. Apple's share in that market is going to drop, just like it did back in the PC days.

“the WP7 app store is growing at a faster rate than Android’s app store when it launched, so there’s definitely positive news to go around. But it will still be a few quarters in our mind before we can tell if WP7 really has traction in a world already dominated by iOS, Android and BlackBerry.”

You are homing in on why I got the Fender Mytouch. Heck, we used it for practice in two of my bands. We had a competition in on rehearsal where one guy with an iPod and I raced to see who could find a song the fastest. I won hands down.

My wife and I also spend a lot of time in rental cars. We use Pandora and the phone jack to plug into the aux jack of the rental car and have all of our Pandora stations at our fingertips. It only becomes useless in a couple of places in rural Kentucky...

It will be interesting to see how the market changes with iPhones on Verizon. Apple moved to VZW too late for me, though. I bought a ‘Droid late last year on a 2 year contract. I like it. Unless there’s some drastic change in the smartphone market, I’ll get another ‘Droid in 2012. My wife is probably going to ditch Blackberry for ‘Droid.

14
posted on 01/19/2011 2:49:05 PM PST
by ArrogantBustard
(Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)

>>> The other OS’s are designed for (and being used on) hardware made by a wide variety of manufacturers <<<

That’s all vey well and good for a general computing platform, but when you’re talking about shrinking everything down in size and going mobile, then the equations start to change. Sure iOS only runs on apple hardware. They designed it for apple hardware, and that’s why it runs so well.

I’ve had an iPhone (3GS) since ‘09 and an iPad since April ‘10. I’ve had nary a hiccup out of either of them. Battery life is good on the iPhone, and absolutely phenomenal on the iPad.

The things just work. And when a new version of the OS comes out; I don’t have to wait for my hardware vendor to catch up and decide when theyre going to have it ready for their platform.

Eventually my 3GS won’t be able to keep up. But that’s okay. It will still run the old version just fine, and if I find I need or want the new features that my phone can’t deliver because it doesn’t have the oomph to run the new OS, I’ll upgrade to new hardware.

In the beginning, Apple dominated the market, but that quickly changed once the multitude of manufacturers began building platforms that ran MS-DOS, and then Windows.

Umm, no, in the beginning, CPM and TRS-80 dominated the market, followed by Atari, and then Commodore, then the IBM PC and derivatives. For example, in the first year of sales, Commodore sold more computers than Apple had ever produced. The TRS-80 was the first computer to break 100,000 in sales, in 1977, when Apple had sold less than a thousand kits.

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